Daniel Inouye, WWII Medal of Honor Recipient and US Senator, Dead at 90

[vienna]

Further more the 442nd societies own website makes no mention of it having had the highest casualty rate of any regiment in the US Army during WWII.

The 442nd website is noticeably not complete. Some sections are not yet posted...

From Wikipedia:

The 442nd is commonly reported to have suffered a casualty rate of 314 percent, informally derived from 9,486 Purple Hearts divided by some 3,000 original in-theater personnel. The official casualty rate, combining KIA (killed) with MIA (missing) and WIA (wounded and removed from action) totals, as a fraction of all who served, is 93%, still uncommonly high. Many Purple Hearts were awarded during the Vosges Mountains campaign and some of the wounded were victims of trenchfoot. But many trenchfoot victims were forced—or willingly chose—to return to their unit even while classified as "wounded in action". Wounded soldiers often escaped from hospitals to return to the fight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_I...(United_States

I'd say a 93% casualty rate is rather a bit up there. I challenge you to find another regular Army unit of comparable size with a higher casualty rate. The 442nd was nicknamed "The Purple Heart Battalion" during WWII by other units...

Here is a more detailed history of the 442nd from the University of California archives:

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=...ew=entire_text

An couple of interesting side notes:

Units of the 442nd were involved in the liberation of Jews from Dachau prison, an irony since many of the men of the 442nd had families interred in detention camps in the US and had, themselves volunteered from those camps;

In the Riviera, a group of Nisei soldiers on guard duty captured a one-man German submarine, a first for an Army unit...